Homily: When God's Plans Are Not Our Plans

[00:00:00] So I arrived here at St. Mike's on July 1st, 2018. Seems like a long time ago. And the first thing I did when I walked in this church was I went up into the choir loft and I stood on the very top pew in the choir loft, which is the highest point in this church.

[00:00:26] And I stood with my back against that back wall underneath that large window and I looked down over this whole church. And I thought, man, this is a big church. And I thought to myself, I wonder how long it's gonna take for the people in this church to realize I have no idea what I'm doing. As it turned out, it took about 10 minutes for them to realize this guy's clueless.

[00:00:55] But I remember looking down, thinking, if you were here in those days, you probably know we had just one thing after another, after another, after another of challenges. Everything from security issues to electrical issues to plumbing underneath the church outside.

[00:01:16] We had rodent issues outside. It was just one thing after another. We had a time that we were, had no money for payroll. And so I tell people, Sylvia, our music director, I was paying her for about a month with Kroger cards.

[00:01:38] And, but I remember literally every night, I was kind of in panic mode. Truly. And maybe you know that feeling in your life where God drops a situation in your lap and you gotta deal with it. Maybe you know that situation in your life where you envision something, but you get something else.

[00:02:08] How do we handle those curve balls? Did you know that the brain, the human brain handles stress in very predictable ways? Because the brain is always looking for patterns, right? So for instance, when you're in a panic mode moment, we stop rational thinking and we go into survival thinking. And what happens is the sensory glands in the brain trigger the amygdala,

[00:02:36] and the sensory glands trigger the amygdala and the hypothalamus gland in the brain, which then floods the bloodstream instantaneously with adrenaline and cortisol. Now this can work to our advantage. Heaven forbid you wake up at two o'clock in the morning and your house is on fire. You gotta get your kids, your spouse out of the house. Act. It can work to our disadvantage because maybe you know this situation

[00:03:05] where you have a coworker or a boss that sends you an email attacking you. What do we do? Wait it out. Don't respond. Take a deep breath. Don't respond. Sit on it overnight. So we have to make these decisions how we're going to respond at the moment. This is why we often say, you've heard me say before probably, we would need to respond not react. Very, very important.

[00:03:33] It's a hard lesson for a lot of people to learn when their temper gets going. How do we handle curveballs that come at us? Because we have big curveballs in life or small ones. What are some of the small ones? Well, let's say that you have to give a big presentation at your job Monday morning

[00:03:55] and on Sunday night, your toddler has a stomach bug, is up vomiting all night, so you don't get any sleep. Curveball. Let's say that you get a flat tire on the 240 loop. Let's say that your boss asks you to work late when you got to pick up your kid from soccer. These little curveballs, big curveballs. Big curveballs. Divorce. Miscarriage. Infertility. Getting laid off.

[00:04:27] A death of a loved one. That's a big one. A horrible medical diagnosis. Some of this stuff that can just jolt us to our very, very core. And we have this vision of what we wanted. We have the reality of what we were given. How do we handle that? If you've not been in that situation yet, odds are you will be.

[00:04:54] All of us at some point are going to have to handle that. What we wanted and what we got. And what we, the ability to roll with what we get shows the faith that we have and the moral character that we have. And that's very, very true, folks. If you are a leader in your family or the community or your job. Because people are looking to us to hold it together.

[00:05:23] This is true. That's why we have to have faith. God can bring good out of this situation even if we wanted that one. And sometimes he'll bring out more fruit from that. You know, in Isaiah 55 it says, God's ways and thoughts are not really our ways and thoughts. The book of Proverbs, it says, We direct our steps but God directs our paths. We may envision this, but we're going to get this.

[00:05:53] And he'll bring good out of this. You know, there's a couple that I know from another parish. And I asked them if I could share their story with you. So this is their story. I've been very close with this couple for a long time. They tried and tried for years to have a child and they couldn't. And they finally had a child, a son.

[00:06:21] And it turns out that their son is very, very autistic. Struggles with autism. And for the first few years of their son's life, their son would constantly hit himself in the head like this. Pretty much all day every day. Just all day like this. And she told me that the immense amount of gut wrenching you can imagine as a mother.

[00:06:50] The turmoil of not being able to stop your child from doing this all day. All day. And what that does to you as a mother. And she said for several years, she would literally go to bed every night crying. Crying. She said I went through therapy. I did everything I could. Eventually, thankfully, he kind of grew out of it. But she said I wanted this and I got this.

[00:07:19] And I just share this with you for this reason. She told me two very, very amazing things that I want to share with you. Number one. She said it's perfectly fine, I believe Father, to mourn the loss of something that we didn't get. To mourn that loss. To not feel guilty about that. And she said God was probably saving us from something worse,

[00:07:48] but teaching us something better. It's amazing insight. He was maybe saving us from something worse or teaching us something better. Love that, man. It's so true. You know, often when we don't get what we want, we feel jealous for those who are not going through what we went through. We feel resentment towards God for putting us in this situation.

[00:08:18] And then for ourself, we can feel numb. And numbness is not the absence of feeling. It's being overwhelmed by feeling. And we just feel numb. Like we're just checked out emotionally. People are like, how you doing? I don't even know. I don't even know how I'm feeling. I'm just getting through another day, man. You ever feel that way?

[00:08:47] So it's hard to have faith. But as time goes on, when people have come through that, they look back and they realize that God was either saving them from something worse or teaching them something better. That's how we grow. That's how we grow. You know, one of the... There's a woman named Lori Gottlieb. And Lori Gottlieb is a family therapist.

[00:09:13] In one of her books, she talks about what she calls the Italy-Holland paradigm. And I'm going to tell you about the Italy-Holland paradigm. That's what she says. She says, imagine that one of your goals in life is to go to Italy. And you save up your money to go to Italy. And you finally get enough money to go to Italy. And you're, you know, you're packed two weeks ahead of time to go to Italy. And you're so excited the night before.

[00:09:43] You get to the airport early. You get on the flight. And you go overseas. And the airplane lands. And the flight attendant comes on the airplane and says, good morning. Welcome to Holland. The local time is 830 in the morning. And you're like, wait, what? What are you...Holland? I was supposed to go to Italy. And you're like, no, ma'am, there's got to be some kind of problem. I was going to Italy.

[00:10:13] Oh, you probably got on the wrong gate. The Italy gate was right next to ours. I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm in Holland? So all of a sudden, now you've got to... You're in full panic mode for like two days. Just angry at yourself. How did this happen? But then after a few days, you think, well, you know what? I'm here. Might as well make the best of it. So you start going to restaurants. You're like, that was good. You meet some people. Oh, they're nice.

[00:10:44] It's Holland. The tulips are beautiful. The art is beautiful. The music is beautiful. And after about eight or nine days, you think, you know, I kind of like Holland. I kind of like this. And by the time it's time to go home, you think, I don't want to leave Holland. And this is what she says. We may envision Italy for our future, but God gives us Holland.

[00:11:12] And what we do in Holland will dictate how we are and our moral character. Because the truth is, folks, at some point, we're all going to be dealt a little bit of Holland when we want Italy. And what you and I do with that will seriously dictate how we lead our families and the impact that we have on them. Life does not always work out how we envision.

[00:11:39] You know, I've known many, many priests over the years as a priest. I've known religious sisters. They've wanted to go to that parish and they got this parish. And they went kicking and screaming into this parish. And after about ten years when they're moved from that parish they didn't want to go to, they were kicking and screaming from that parish. Because they don't, now don't want to leave it. They find themselves in Holland and they love Holland.

[00:12:06] For each one of us, we remember that God is using us to impact other people. And often the way he does that is by leaving us in Holland to learn a lesson from it.